Children’s day out at “Maker Fest” in Ahmedabad

Maker Fest founder Asha Jadeja Motwani announced the creation of a private limited company to scale up the rapidly growing iteration of an event she firstintroduced inIndia four years ago.

The Silicon Valley-based angel investor and entrepreneur also announced a team of Chief Operating Officers and Chief Executive Officers for the new company that will enable Indian startups leapfrog to exponential growth.

“We have grown in ways that I had not anticipated; we are receiving unprecedented sponsorship offers and we feel a need to create a real organisation,” Asha said.

The announcement was made at the inaugural of the fourth edition of annual Maker Fest at the campus oftheSchool of Engineering and Applied Science(SEAS), Ahmedabad University here last evening.

The new COOs – Kishan Parikh and Chaitya Shah – are both cofounders of the Maker Fest.

Among the four CEOs is Lauren from Lady Tech Guild from New York, a collective of professional women who are 3D artists, designers, biohackers, educators and entrepreneurs in the 3D industry.

Prateek Parmar,who runs a company that works in the intersection of arts and electronics, Tia Kansara of Replenish, a London-based company, and Nandita, a computer engineer turned artist, are the other CEOs.

“This company will be a flexible entity and will craft the way forward for the Maker Fest,” said Asha. “We are happy that we are graduating from a website to a company.”

She also said the company is similar to the functioning of several companies in Silicon Valley.

“It is common to find one person as a CEO of two or more companies in Silicon Valley. For example Jack Dorsey heads both Twitter and Square,” she said.

Dr Jan Jannick who teaches at Stanford University delivered a lecture on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning at the event.

The Maker Fest is inspired by the Makers Faire, which began in 2006 and now has chapters across USA, Europe, Japan and Africa.

The current edition of event, which draws school and college students, tech enthusiasts, artists, designers and anybody with an interest in creating things is featuringover 150 inventors and 25 startups presenting community friendly products, with potential to impact society.

15 inspirational speakers will deliver keynote talks over the next two days. Among them are V Sunil, the brain behind the Make in India movement, Emeka Okefor of TED.com who created Makerfaire Africa besides artists like Bose Krishnamachari and Riyas Komu, co-founders of the Kochi Art Biennale.

Previous editions of the event were hosted at National Institute of Design (NID) in 2014, the CEPT in 2015.

Photo Captions:

Maker Fest: The three-day Maker Fest, an event founded by Silicon Valley angel investor Asha Jadeja Motwani, is being held at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences in Ahmedabad from January 6-8.

** Lauren Slowik, from New York-based LadyTech Guild, a collective of women professionals in the 3D industry gives a demonstration to Maker Fest attendees and particpants. On Friday, founder Asha Jadeja Motwani announced she was setting up Maker Fest as a private limited company and named Ms Slowik as one of its four CEOs.